Alexandros Papadiamantis Resource Page

Alexandros Papadiamantis (March 4, 1851- January 3, 1911)

Autobiography of Alexandros Papadiamantis

Documentary on Alexandros Papadiamantis

 

Alexandros Papadiamandis: The Spiritual Dimension of His Work

 

“I Write As It Comes Down To Me”: Papadiamantis as a Poet and the Ethos of Inspiration. 115 Years Since His Repose. 

The Cell Where Alexandros Papadiamantis Lived for Ten Years

 

Recollections of St. Nicholas Planas by Alexandros Papadiamantis

 

The Chapel of the Prophet Elisha in Athens: A Monument of True and Unadulterated Orthodoxy 

 

Saint John Koukouzelis as a Model for our Lives

 

The Grave and the Skull of Alexandros Papadiamantis

 

All-Night Vigil In Memory of Alexandros Papadiamantis

 

Photos From Vigil In Honor of Alexandros Papadiamantis  

New Book - Greece’s Dostoevsky: The Theological Vision of Alexandros Papadiamandis

 

Alexandros Papadiamandis and Sigmund Freud

 

Alexandros Papadiamantis and Neo-Barlaamism

 

Alexandros Papadiamantis and Bram Stoker's "Dracula"

 

Alexandros Papadiamantis and "The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells  

 

Christmas in Greek Literature

 

"The Gleaner: A Christmas Story" by Alexandros Papadiamantis

 

"The Slacker's Christmas" (Alexandros Papadiamantis)

 

"The Christmas Bread" (Alexandros Papadiamantis) 
 

Christ at the Castle: Papadiamantis’ Tale Captures the Genuine Spirit of Christmas

 

The Reception of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" in Greece

 

Theophany (An Essay of Alexandros Papadiamantis) 

 

"All-Bright Theophany": A Short Story by Alexandros Papadiamantis  

 

Alexandros Papadiamantis and the Great Canon

 

Pascha With Papadiamantis: Lessons from a Panegyrist

 

A Village Easter: Memories of Childhood (A Story by Alexandros Papadiamantis)

 

A Romaic Pascha With Alexandros Papadiamantis  

The Dormition of the Theotokos (Alexandros Papadiamantis)

 

Saint Eusebius of Samosata as a Model for our Lives

 

The Romiosini of 1821 and the Great Powers (6 of 11) 

 

"The Immigrant": Papadiamantis's First Film Adaptation

 

Panagia Megalomata in Skiathos 

 

The Church of Panagia Prekla in Skiathos

 

The Poet and the Saint: The Trek of Nicolas Calas to Mount Athos and his Meeting with Saint Daniel of Katounakia

Nicolas Calas (1907-88) was a Greek-American surrealist poet, art critic, cultural historian, and lifelong Trotskyist, who blended Marxism and psychoanalysis along with the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Calas's birth name was Nikos Kalamaris although he would publish essays as "Manolis Spieros" from 1929 to 1934 and poetry as "Nikitos Randos" from 1930 to 1936. An only child, born in Lausanne, Switzerland but raised in Athens, he was educated at home by his aristocratic family, who placed an emphasis on languages inasmuch as they hoped that he would become a diplomat.

The Grave and the Skull of Alexandros Papadiamantis

The grave of Alexandros Papadiamantis (+ January 3, 1911) is located on his home island of Skiathos. It is specifically located to the left of the entrance of the cemetery, opposite the small, improvised church.  In reality, the grave is a cenotaph, an almost empty monument that stands in the place he was once buried. Only a very small portion of his bones is found in this grave. It was only by local testimonies that we are informed his bones were translated to a nearby church, though with no other details. Thus, over the years, the location of the bones of Papadiamantis were lost, having been transferred to one of the churches of the island.

"The Cantankerous Man": A Christmas Story by Alexandros Moraitidis

The Cantankerous Man

By Alexandros Moraitidis

(1889)

On Christmas Eve Old-Spyraina had excited common curiosity. Indeed, according to the most precise observations of the old gammers – who are the most observant of all living beings everywhere – she had appeared twelve times from dawn till the forenoon upon the Cliff, the highest point in the insular town, from which one could gaze at the expanse of the sea.

“What’s come over that woman there?” The old women repeatedly wondered seeing Old-Spyraina panting up and down the Cliff – she lived at the Threshing Floors, at the extremity of the town.

The Reception of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" in Greece

By John Sanidopoulos

By the time A Christmas Carol was first translated into Greek in 1888, Charles Dickens was already known in Greece. Despite the high rate of illiteracy in the newly-formed Greek state (87.5% of men in 1840; 93.7% of women in 1870), Dickens began to be known in 1851. His works were published through the four main Greek literary journals by the intelligentsia of the time who wished to publish works that portrayed all social classes to diffuse knowledge and bring about social progress.

The First Translation of Edgar Allan Poe Into Modern Greek

Emmanuel Rhoides

Greece was a primary inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe. As a child he studied Greek and Latin literature, during which time his love for Homer developed. Because he considered Homer to be one of the most important writers ever, and Plato too, he excelled in Hellenic studies. His love for Greece led him to even lie to people that he had visited Greece, which he did not. Furthermore, one of his literary idols was Lord Byron, who had gone to Greece to fight for Greek Independence against the Turks, and it was in Greece that he died. In 1827 Poe made an attempt to follow in Byron's footsteps, but it did not come to pass. Nonetheless, Greece can be read throughout his works.

Address to the Youth on How to Derive Benefit from Greek Literature (St. Basil the Great)

Some early Christians rejected pagan learning and asked, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" But St. Basil the Great (329-379) thought Athens had quite a lot to do with it! In this exhortation to virtue Basil encouraged the selective study of ancient Greek texts, and reassured his youthful readers that despite their pagan origin, where poets, historians and philosophers were quite compatible with orthodox Christian thought, they might profitably be studied where they inculcated virtue, as in viewing the reflection of the sun in water before viewing the sun itself.

Address to the Youth on How to Derive Benefit from Greek Literature

By St. Basil the Great

I. There are many considerations which urge me to counsel you, my children, on what things I judge to be best, and on those which I am confident, if you accept them, will be to your advantage. For the fact that I have reached this age, and have already been trained through many experiences, and indeed also have shared sufficiently in the all-teaching vicissitude of both good and evil fortune, has made me conversant with human affairs, so that I can indicate the safest road, as it were, to those who are just entering upon life. Moreover, I come immediately after your parents in natural relationship to you, so that I myself entertain for you no less good-will than do your fathers; and I am sure, unless I am somewhat wrong in my judgment of you, that you do not long for your parents when your eyes rest upon me. If, then, you should receive my words with eagerness, you will belong to the second class of those praised by Hesiod;1 but should you not do so, I indeed should not like to say anything unpleasant, but do you of yourselves remember the verses in which he says: "Best is the man who sees of himself at once what must be done, and excellent is he too who follows what is well indicated by others, but he who is suited for neither is useless in all respects."

The Church Fathers and Heathen Literature Under Julian the Apostate

From Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, Bk.3, Chs. 12 and 16:

Observing that those who suffered martyrdom under the reign of Diocletian were greatly honored by the Christians, and knowing that many among them were eagerly desirous of becoming martyrs, Julian determined to wreak his vengeance upon them in some other way. Abstaining therefore from the excessive cruelties which had been practiced under Diocletian; he did not however altogether abstain from persecution (for any measures adopted to disquiet and assault I regard as persecution). This then was the plan he pursued: he enacted a law by which Christians were excluded from the cultivation of literature; 'lest,' said he, 'when they have sharpened their tongue, they should be able the more readily to meet the arguments of the heathen.'

Photios Kontoglou on Goethe, Kazantzakis and Venezis

Nikos Kazantzakis

By Dr. Constantine Cavarnos

Next we spoke briefly about Goethe, Kazantzakis and Venezis. I was interested in knowing his opinion regarding them. Goethe's name was mentioned as we were talking about Kazantzakis. It became clear that Kontoglou did not share the enthusiasm of many contemporary Greek intellectuals for the famous German writer. The philosopher-theologian Nikolaos Louvaris, for example, refers to Goethe repeatedly, and in fact more often than to any other writer, always approvingly, in his two-volume work Symposion Hosion (Symposium of Holy Men). Kontoglou, on the other hand, refers to him only once in his books, in the Preface of his first book, Pedro Cazas. For Kazantzakis, as I noted in an earlier chapter, he had no use. Photios remarked that both Goethe and Kazantzakis are writers with pompous expression, ostentatious, ever endeavoring to impress others with their assumed wisdom. The excessive admiration of Goethe was, according to Photios, another example of xenomania of contemporary Greeks.

"John the Blessed": A New Year's Eve Tale by Photios Kontoglou

Describes a visit of St. Basil on New Years Eve, which is also the eve of his feast, years after his repose.

John the Blessed

A Tale of Photios Kontoglou

The Nativity Feast having passed, St. Basil took his staff and traversed all of the towns, in order to see who would celebrate his Feast Day with purity of heart. He passed through regions of every sort and through villages of prominence, yet regardless of where he knocked, no door opened to him, since they took him for a beggar. And he would depart embittered, for, though he needed nothing from men, he felt how much pain the heart of every impecunious person must have endured at the insensitivity that these people showed him. One day, as he was leaving such a merciless village, he went by the graveyard, where he saw that the tombs were in ruins, the headstones broken and turned topsy-turvy, and how the newly dug graves had been turned up by jackals. Saint that he was, he heard the dead speaking and saying: “During the time that we were on the earth, we labored, we were heavy-burdened, leaving behind us children and grandchildren to light just a candle, to burn a little incense on our behalf; but we behold nothing, neither a Priest to read over our heads a memorial service nor kóllyva, as though we had left behind no one.” Thus, St. Basil was once again disquieted, and he said to himself, “These villagers give aid neither to the living nor to the deceased,” departing from the cemetery and setting out alone in the midst of the freezing snow.

"The Gleaner: A Christmas Story" by Alexandros Papadiamantis

Alexandros Papadiamantis is not only considered a "Dosteovsky of Modern Greece", but one can argue he is a Charles Dickens of Modern Greece as well. Like Dickens, Papadiamantis wrote a few Christmas tales of a beneficial nature that deserve a read. One article, making the comparison between Papadiamantis and Dickens, writes:

Christmas in Greek Literature

Christmas, the great feast of Christianity, is celebrated throughout the world in different ways. Prior to the advent of technology, literature was the only way to document culture-specific traditions concerning Christmas, which eventually emerged as the ideal setting for fairy tales, short stories and novels.

Despite their differences, a multitude of works, from Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol to Nikolai Gogol’s Christmas Eve and Agatha Christie’s The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, all attest to the fact that this period of year signifies a closure, a time of resolutions and decisions on a universal level. Greek Literature includes a great body of works whose focus is Christmas, imbued by the religious spirituality closely linked with the Greek psyche.

Alexandros Papadiamantis: The Spiritual Dimension of His Work

By Monk Moses the Athonite

After expressing my warmest thanks to those who kindly invited my lowliness to this vesperal memorial anniversary, I will proceed to my subject, as I do not like wasting time with long introductions.

160 years have gone by since the birth of Alexandros Papadiamantis and 100 since his passing away. Despite the passing of so many decades, his memory remains alive. People have always been writing about him. There are not so many references for any other of our literary men. We will try, in the short time available, to show the religiosity, the Orthodox Christian spirituality, of Alexandros Papadiamantis which is undoubtedly spontaneous and sincere and warm.